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Saturday, November 8, 2014

In fact, it has been exactly one year to the day that I “got
my R,” which means that I officially got to call myself a returned peace corps volunteer
(RPCV) instead of simply a peace corps volunteer (PCV). Its kinda a big deal.
At least to the people in country still having massive pizza cravings. I
thought that you might want to know a little bit about what has been going on
in Cookie-town, and maybe even with me this past year.

I started out my life as a returned PCV by getting onto a
plane and flying to….Morrocco. Sorry Mom! Pam and I had an amazing adventure
seeing some of the beautiful sights and cities. We went shopping in a bazar,
explored some Roman ruins, walked through a mountain side city, rode camels
through the Sahara (I managed to fall off. Yes, it hurt), visited a local PCV,
got sick from eating too many apricots (worth it), went to a beach on the Mediterranean,
and even got to visit some filming locations from Game of Thrones (which is
exciting to approximately no one but us). Overall, an astounding adventure.

They let you touch the ruins :)

The offending caramel

Khalessi was here!

And then Pam went back to cookie town to do even more
astounding things.

Remember that library project that you helped me out with?
Well, Books for Kids Africa expanded the project, and Pam completely went all
out. There is now a whole tutoring program at the elementary school library. High
school students who have been taught how to be tutors are now teaching
elementary school students to read Portuguese. I wish I could share with you
how much it means but it would simply devolve into adjectives and capital
letters. To put it simply, future PCVs teaching secondary school will be much
more effective when their students can speak and read Portuguese.

Not only did she run this tutoring project, she also ran the
local AND provincial science fairs.

In other news, Pam is a super hero. And she got her “R”
yesterday! And now she is coming home. I'm so excited to get to see her again!

Speaking of home, I now present some frequently asked
questions from my return:

How are you?

I was awesome. Then not so much. But I’m pretty good now.
Coming back is complicated.

What are you doing
with your life?

I’m currently living in Norfolk, Virginia studying Medical
Laboratory Science. I finish up on December third!

So….what is Medical
Laboratory Science?

You know how there is a nice person who draws your blood,
and a nice doctor who tells you what is wrong? There is a middle man who takes
that blood, runs a bunch of tests, and gives the results to the doctor. I will
be that middle man.

Did you start crying
the first time you saw a cereal aisle in the grocery store?

Surprisingly no. I really expected this to happen. Though in
my own defense I have not actually bought cereal since I came back.

Aren’t you glad you
came back before Ebola?

1. EBOLA IS NOT IN MOZAMBIUQE. The whole of Europe
is closer to ebola then my friends.

2. Though if Ebola did somehow reach Moz, the
results would be devastating. And that is very scary.

Though it has been interesting attempting to talk to people
about how a virus like Ebola thrive in the third world due to just enough
infrastructure to allow that virus to travel but not enough to be able to
contain it.

How are
Thelma/Adelino/your puppy?

Everyone is actually do really well! Thelma is continuing to
go to school, and Adelino is living in the city and going to University to
become a teacher. I am extremely proud of him! The puppy, after a slight health
scare, is also quite happy.

Then there is my least favorite question. One that I
thankfully haven’t been asked many times:

Did you love it?

No. Yes. Maybe? It is such an outstanding complicated
question. Those of you that have read this blog know how up and down my entire experience
was. Yes, I loved watching the faces of my students as they learned, and did
well at English theater competition. I didn’t love seeing the face of poverty
and the diseases and lack of human rights that go with it. I loved seeing
different cultures, through their dances and foods and ceremonies, but hated
seeing the culture of poverty which shows itself in misogamy and blatant corruption.
I loved making friends with the children
that came to my yard to play, but hated it when they died.

And while we are on a slightly depressing note (because,
after all, it wouldn’t be a peace corps blog without at least ONE depressing
paragraph) we will go with:

How was it coming back?

The only answer I have to that is... hard. It is hard coming back
to a country where things are so good. Where the struggles shifts from will I
be able to find clean water to people dying of heart attacks from their high
stress jobs in their massive homes. It is hard becoming once more part of this
type of stress, and I get angry at myself every time I start to panic about
trying to find a job after school. It is hard coming back to a country that has
been the epitome of perfection in your mind for two years, but isn't actually perfect. Politicians are still
courrupt, though in different ways. Bosses and teachers can still be horrible
people. Poverty exists and is so easy to be trapped in. Life isn’t fair.

But there is a flip side to all the difficulties of coming
back. And that is the chipotle wonder of coming back.

There are the obvious things: running water, a loving
family, high speed interntet, chipotle ect.

But I have been making a list of the things that I didn’t
even realize that I had missed until I came back:

Carpet. What’s more wonderful then walking barefoot on
carpet? Nothing.

Food….whenever you want it. Is it after dark and you need a
tomato? No problem. Do you want something other then green pepers, onion and
tomato? No problem. Do you want ice cream that you don’t have to make and then
wait 24hours for it to freeze? No problem. Are you hungry and don’t feel like
cooking? No problem.

Life without bugs and bats and other creepy crawlies
everywhere. I just kinda got used to it.

Hair conditioner

Libraries. There are whole BUILDINGS just filled with books for you to look at.

And I know this was on the obvious list. But Chipotle. Oh my
goodness. I forgot how absolutely amazing Chipotle was.

And so that’s it. It has been a year since I left Mozambique.
I really can’t believe it. Thank you, everyone who has gone on this journey
with me. Your love, prayers, and thoughts have meant more then you know.

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Throughout my two years in Moz I have been adding to a file of photos on my computer. And today, in honor of it being my last day in Cookie-town, although not my last day in Moz, I have decided to share it.

But first, a little back story.

Most of the clothing that people wear in my town comes from two places: the tailor (who makes clothes out of capulana) or "calamadades." What are calamadades? Well, remember all those clothes that you donated to various charities? Well, the nice stuff stayed in America and was sold in thrift stores. The fairly nice stuff was sent to Eastern Europe. The okay stuff was marked "Africa A" and sent to nicer African countries like Kenya and South Africa. Then you have the clothes marked "Africa B" and they get sent here. Once they are sent here, the 100 lb bundles of clothes are sold to distributors for the price of the customs fees. These distributors then go to the villages and sell the clothes. And then what happens, is the random American walking around the village gets ridiculously excited every time she sees something that she recognizes, and asks to take a picture. Except of course when she sees the funniest/best shirts and doesn't have her camera.

But thats enough talking about myself in the third person. And here is my picture collection of the shirts that have made me giggle or given me pause when I have been lucky enough to have my camera on me and the person wearing the shirt hasn't thought me creepy for wanting a picture.

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Part of the challenge of Peace Corps is making friends.
The challenge doesn't lie in meeting people or getting them to talk to you, pretty much everyone does that (except the people who are convinced that America concocted HIV/AIDS as an experimental way to kill off all the poor people of the world, and that PCVs are actually the tireless grad students whose job it is to go into impoverished countries and take observations of how the experiment is going- but I digress). The real challenge is finding someone that you can trust, whose sole purpose isn't to take advantage of you. Too many times you think you have a friend, when they ask you for huge amounts of money or simply want to use your computer/modem/anything. Or even worse, you stuff suddenly goes missing. Not that this is always, and not that it is even most people, but being seen as a mega-rich outsider tends to draw out the bad seeds. So you just have to be careful. I am friends with other teachers, the director's wife, and other people around town, but Pam and I have one person who is our absolute best friend. Her name is Evette. She has never asked us for anything and always runs up for a hug whenever she sees us.

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Water is huge here in Cookie-town. This is mostly because of how the seasons work. Like we all learned in school the closer you get to the equator, the less you have the 4 changing seasons and the more you have the two water based seasons: wet and dry.

When I came here, I didn't understand the extremities that these seasons go to, So this year, I took pictures.

Way back in January (the height of the wet season), I walked to the river and took pictures. Now we are nearing the end of the dry season, so I went back to take more, if the same river, from the same exact place. I tried to get pictures to match as best I could. Spoilers: You should very easily be able to tell the difference between the January and Now pictures.

And now people that depend on the river for their water supply dig wells into the river bed. But don't worry, with the new rains coming soon, the river will regenerate in a spectacular fashion!

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

I have met many people in my two years in Mozambique. Some I
have liked, some not so much. My absolute favorite, however, is a 12th
grader named Adelino. The other day, I asked him to write out a biography of
himself. He did so, all in English, which to be honest is something I would
struggle with if I had to do the same in Portuguese. And so, with only a few
edits, I would like to share Adelino’s story with you.

Adeino Antonio is a young student who is very interested in
his schooling. He was born in 1993 in Cookie-Town district in a very small
village. (My town is the district
capital, meaning that it is the largest town in the entire “county.” Which is a
significantly bigger deal when there are no cars.)

He started school later, in 2001, when he was eight because
the growth of poor people is slow. When he was 5 he was still a child and
unable to walk to school. (In towns out
in the bush, schools tend to be a couple of miles away. Malnutrition also
causes extremely slow growth in children.) He was taken to work on the farm
with his parents, and as a result he is dedicated to agriculture.

His father died in 2003 when he was 10 years old and
studying in 3rd grade. The following year he didn’t go to school
because he didn’t have anyone to help him. (There
are school fees to be paid, as well as the school uniform and school supplies
to buy. As a 10 year old Adelino didn’t have any money of his own so he would
have to ask his father to pay for these things. With a dead father there was no
one to ask). In 2004 his mother managed to get money and Adelino carried on
with his studies.

He finished 5th grade in Nauicio Incomplete
Primary School in 2006 (Incomplete
primary school- grades 1 through 5, complete primary school- grades 1 through
7. Smaller villages only have incomplete and the students need to travel to a
larger town to complete the last two grades) Adelino and his mother sold
peanuts and cashews to buy a bike for Adelino to ride to school, which was far
from home.

In 2007 Adelino left home alone for a small village called
Gracio where he wanted to study in 6th grade, but he didn’t study
the first two months because he didn’t have all proper documents so the principle
would not let him attend classes. Then he went back home, where his mother made
local wine (an alcoholic substance make
from corn powder and yeast called Kabanga. Absolutely disgusting, but everyone
here seems to like it) and sold it in order to make money to pay for the
documents. Adelino organized all the documents that were asked for and began 6th
grade.

At the end of 2007 he finished 7th grade (Not sure how he did this- possibly the
school just combined 6th and 7th grade, or he managed to
get through both of them in one year, Adelino is a smart kid, I wouldn’t doubt
it.) and sold his bike. He worked with his mother making wine from sugar
cane, which was a small profitable business at the moment.

With that money, Adelino came all the way to cookie-town
alone to pay school fees, but on the way home he lost them (aka they were stolen, so that someone else
could go to school without paying the fees) He had to return to cookie town
to buy the documents again. He started secondary school in 2009.

There were more problems when he began his studies in
Cookie-town because he didn’t have anywhere to live. He stayed with other
students from around his home town. Then his uncle bought him a small plot of
land in Cookie-Town and two months later Adelino built a house there by himself (land is not expensive here. Even the poorest
people that I have met have rights to the land that their house is on. Many
students, even those that live with family or friends, have their only separate
tiny house in the backyard. It is the American equivalent to buying a cellphone).
However in 2010 the house was badly damaged and Adelino was barely able to
rebuild it.

The rest of Adelino’s
story is very modest, so I think I will tell it myself. Adelino has
participated in all the PCV activities that have come through, since the girl
that I replaced started the English Theater group. That means: English Theater,
The school newspaper, Science Fair (where he won the Cookie-Town level and went
on to the Provincial Fair) and more. He is at our house almost every day to ask
questions about English, which he is determined to speak better then
Portuguese. He has extra text books that he uses as well as novels that my
family has sent over. Thus far his favorite has been James and the Giant Peach.
In fact, he is so good at English that some of his teachers make him do their
homework for university (if you want to hear an angry rant, ask me more about
that). He also corrects my spelling whenever I am writing things down. Despite
still being in high school, he is paying(well, I’m helping) to take extra
computer classes so that he is more competitive for University. He is going to
graduate with honors at the end of this year. I am determined that he will go
to university, and will help him as much as I can.

Sometimes in Moz you get very overwhelmed by everything: the cultural differences, the food differences, the weather differences, ect ect. And then something happens and you realize that despite it all, some things will always be the same.

Like when one of my fellow teachers came over and asked me to take pictures of her baby, including 3 costume and location changes. Poor adorable Antonio wasn't nearly as excited about the prospect as his mother.